


Hard Feelings

by horselizard



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Angst, Humiliation, M/M, Messy, Minor Violence, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-21
Updated: 2013-04-21
Packaged: 2017-12-09 03:08:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/769258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/horselizard/pseuds/horselizard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lister tries to forgive and forget, but Rimmer has a habit of making him remember.  And now that Rimmer has a body of his own, he’s going to pay for what he once did to Lister’s.</p>
<p>Set at an undefined point after VIII; status quo is that of BTE/X. Compatible with most post-VIII headcanons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hard Feelings

It all started, as these things so often do, with an argument.

From time to time, something would come up in conversation which Rimmer had missed, and they would have to fill him in. Going back over the story of one misadventure or another would frequently open old wounds - wounds which, on occasion, Rimmer was only too happy to pour salt into.

This time, some smegger - the Cat, probably - had blundered in to the discussion with a mention of Caroline Carmen. Lister sat looking sullen and withdrawn as the trauma of losing his arm was raked over. He had tried to repress the memory of that brief but horrifying period, but when Kryten reached the part about his disobedient prosthetic arm, it all came flooding back - the grief, the helplessness, the bottomless sense of depression at the thought that this would be his future.

And Rimmer, the callous goit, was laughing like a drain.

“What the smeg is wrong with you, man?” Lister yelled, thumping his indistingushably-regrown right fist on the table. “Do you think it’s funny, me losing a smegging arm?”

“No,” Rimmer giggled, trying and failing to keep a straight face at the sight of Lister’s sudden fury. “But it’s funny when you _think_ you’ve lost one.”

Lister’s mouth fell open in disbelief. Another punch to the gut. As painful as though it were yesterday. Speechless, he looked to Kryten and the Cat for support - and saw that they were avoiding meeting his eye, exchanging glances, stifling smirks.

Rage clouded Lister’s vision, and he raised his counterfeit arm, his whole body trembling as he squared up to his bastard of a bunkmate. _That_ wiped the smirk from Rimmer’s face all right; he dimly registered that the hologram had gone deathly pale. But, as usual, it was only a matter of seconds before his self-control won out over his impulsive anger. He deflated, his arm dropping to his side, then after one final, long, dagger-filled stare at Rimmer, he spun round and stormed out of the room.

After all, revenge, unlike many other dishes, was best served cold.

 

Rimmer, with his unerring instinct for self-preservation, had been avoiding Lister since the somewhat heated discussion that afternoon. Kryten had, after a few moments’ awkward silence, gone to try and calm him down, but he wasn’t in a hurry to find out how that had gone. It was just a joke, for smeg’s sake. The boy would cool off in his own time... he hoped.

Therefore, he was more than a little apprehensive when he rounded a corner and found himself face-to-face with the very person he was hoping not to see.

“Ah! Listy,” he trilled, in what was very definitely a chummy rather than panicked tone. “Er, feeling any better?”

“What? Oh! Oh, you mean earlier. Er, yeah, I am, actually.” Lister shot him an abashed grin, then looked at the floor and started playing awkwardly with his dreads. “Listen, man, I didn’t mean to scare ya. I overreacted. I’m sorry. Look, let’s go back to our quarters, eh? I’ve got a couple of things prepared for this evening’s entertainment.”

“Have you, now? Well, that sounds splendid,” Rimmer replied, cautiously optimistic that this time he’d got away with overstepping the mark. “And, er, don’t worry about it, Listy. Forgive and forget, that’s what I say.”

“Quite right, Rimmer, forgive and forget,” Lister echoed, and just for a second, Rimmer could have sworn he saw his eyes flash darkly. But then he was all smiles again, so he tried to put it out of his mind as they set off to the bunkroom. He seemed to have calmed down, after all, and an evening spent amiably going along with whatever puerile game he’d cooked up might smooth things over between them.

“Lock,” Lister said the moment they were through the door, and Rimmer was brought up short when he saw what was on the table. It was an obscenely large plate of mashed potato.

A nasty sinking feeling started to creep over him. _Smeg,_ he thought, _this is what happens when you trust people._ He wasn’t entirely sure what Lister was planning, but one thing was certain: he didn’t want to stick around and find out.

He gingerly turned back round towards the door, but Lister was blocking his path. His expression once again displayed the murderous fury he had seen earlier, but this time, it was tempered with a steely determination, which just made it all the more terrifying. He gulped. Whatever it was he had felt sinking, it was now undoubtedly submerged for good.

“Rimmer,” he said quietly, “I don’t think you understand exactly how much you hurt me earlier. And d’you know what? I don’t think you’re _ever_ going to understand.”

His arms folded, he stepped closer to the hologram until they were almost nose to nose. Rimmer had to struggle with every fibre of his being against his urge to back away, because he had a feeling that if he did, things would end up even worse for him.

“You’re selfish, Rimmer,” he continued. “So smegging selfish that you’re never going to bother, you’ll never even _try_ , to understand why you end up hurting people. And I’ve said it before, and I’m saying it now, and I’m sick of saying it. So you know what?”

He gave Rimmer’s shoulder a shove, and he staggered backwards, a little closer to the table which bore the fruits of Lister’s ‘preparations’.

“I figure,” Lister hissed, “I might as well just hurt you back.”

Lightning fast, he grabbed Rimmer by the hair, dragged him across to the table, and shoved him head-first into the mountain of mashed potato. Rimmer spluttered helplessly as Lister violently rubbed his face in the tepid, cloying mush, his eyes screwed desperately shut, little unmashed chunks finding their way painfully up into his nostrils.

“I’ve wanted to do this to you for _years_ ,” Lister snarled in triumph.

Smegging hell. He didn’t even _want_ any mashed potato.

“Not so much fun when it’s _your_ body that’s taking the brunt, is it?” Lister yelled angrily.

Rimmer struggled to lift his head, but Lister thrust it back down into the sticky heap with unnecessary force. “Not so funny when it’s someone _else_ dishing out the abuse, is it?”

Rimmer was glad he didn’t need to breathe, because Lister certainly wasn’t giving him any chances to. He gave a muffled cry as his enraged bunkmate ground his face even deeper into the mound of creamy, starchy gunk. The stuff stuck to his skin and slithered against it and filled his eyes and nose and mouth, and as Lister continued mercilessly burying his head in it, it was even beginning to fill his ears.

Suddenly, Lister yanked Rimmer’s head back up so that he could spit out his next words threateningly close to his face, a move which would have been more effective had Rimmer had any hope of getting his eyes open. “You’re not the only one, Rimmer, who can treat someone else’s body with total disrespect.”

With that, he plunged Rimmer’s face back into the mound of nauseating gloop, rubbed it in a bit more for good measure, and finally let go. He slowly licked the smears of mash from his fingers, folded his arms, and waited.

An exhausted groan issued from the pile of mash, as Rimmer slowly raised his hands and planted them heavily on the table. Painfully, he pushed himself upright, and Lister was satisfied to see that every inch of his face was caked with the thick, glutinous mess. Kryten had obviously followed his instructions to the letter. No pint of cream and full pound of butter for Rimmer _this_ time; nobody could fuck up a mashed potato recipe like his dear old gran.

Spluttering and grimacing, Rimmer scraped the mash out of his eyes, then inelegantly began trying to pinch and blow the stuff out of his nostrils. He had suspected from the first that he was going to end up deeply, deeply humiliated, but he hadn’t realised that getting a faceful of mashed potato could (if administered with malicious carelessness) be quite so unpleasant. It clung to his face, it was smeared in his hair, and its sickeningly bland taste lingered in his mouth. It had been a while since he had been through such a revolting experience.

Lister had been ready for protests, curses, a counter-attack; anything but this cowed, piteous docility. His satisfaction grew as he watched Rimmer’s pathetic, wordless display. Perhaps the smegger had learnt some kind of lesson from this after all. At any rate, he looked much less punchable now that he was, for once, swallowing his pride.

Rimmer gave up trying to regain any meaningful level of nasal comfort, and forced himself to meet Lister’s eye. He still looked angry, but at least now the anger was mixed with a faint sneer of amusement at Rimmer’s discomfiture.

“ _Now_ ,” Lister said, “I feel better.”

He swept out of the room, and as the door closed behind him, Rimmer suddenly sagged. He sank down into one of the chairs and tried to busy himself wiping the mess from his face, but his hands were trembling too much.

He had known something like this would happen one day. From the minute he’d been given his hard-light drive, he’d been uneasy, preoccupied... unable to fully enjoy it, when every wrong he’d ever done Lister was preying on his mind. He’d got frustrated, not being able to touch anything to stop Lister from annoying him, but he’d got cocky too; a man who couldn’t touch him couldn’t cause him physical pain.

Once he finally had a solid body again, his cowardice reasserted itself with a vengeance. Oh, he’d always been scared of threats to the ship, damage to his light bee, anything that endangered his projection; but it was physical pain, over and above anything else, which sent him into spasms of irrational terror. And, specifically, the kind of physical pain which was dealt not out of homicidal coldness, or sadistic cruelty, or the heat of battle... but out of deep-seated, raging, personal hatred.

He doubted there was any other being in the universe who hated him more than Lister.

And since he’d come back he’d got cocky again, winding Lister up just like he used to, thinking he was braver these days, or perhaps thinking that if the man hadn’t swung for him by now, he wasn’t ever going to. He’d had it coming, and he was lucky. It could have been much, much worse.

He let out another long, low, cathartic groan, and let himself collapse face-down again into the sticky, comforting embrace of the lukewarm mashed potato.


End file.
